


Faraway Lands

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - East of the Sun and West of the Moon Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Animal Transformation, F/M, Fairy Tale Logic, Furiosa Was Never Taken, Illiteracy, Lowkey Magic, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Relationship, Quests, Spells & Enchantments, The Green Place Survived, Trope Bingo Round 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-16 06:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15431022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: The third time that the dingo comes to the Green Place demanding a wife in exchange for riches for the rest of the village, Furiosa steps forward. "Dig a well that will never run dry," she says, "And I will go with you."





	Faraway Lands

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Trope Bingo Round 10](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org), for the "AU: Fairy Tale/Myth" square. Originally posted [on tumblr](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/173712602956/c-1)!

The third time that the dingo comes to the Green Place demanding a wife in exchange for riches for the rest of the village, Furiosa steps forward. "Dig a well that will never run dry," she says, "And I will go with you."

The dingo gives her a hard-eyed look and then nods its head.

"Furiosa!" Valkyrie hisses, grabbing at her arm. "What are you doing?"

"It's not going to leave us alone until it gets what it wants," Furiosa says. They all know why no one is suggesting they kill it like they would any other marauder, but no one says it aloud. "Would you have it take another of our girls instead?"

"That doesn't mean you need to volunteer!" Valkyrie replies.

But Furiosa shakes her head and lays her hand on Valkyrie's shoulder, giving a reassuring squeeze. "I'll be fine," she says, even if she can guarantee no such thing, "And now you'll never run out of water."

"Like I trust that mutt to dig such a well," Valkyrie says with a sniff.

The dingo digs for three days and three nights, and while it works Furiosa listens to advice from everyone, asked for or not.

"When it's done with the well, just run away," Joy says.

"Next ask for a rifle that never misses," says Maadie.

"Throw down a rock to break its back while it's distracted," Senna says.

Some advice is on the topic of marriage, which Furiosa does her best not to dwell on. Surely the dingo doesn't expect any sort of _true_ marriage between them?

On the dawn of the fourth day, the dingo leaps out of the well it has dug, fur darkened with water. "The well is done," it says. Its ears swivel back to catch the sounds of the tents behind him and Furiosa realizes that it's entirely possible that the dingo's heard every word spoken about it while it was working.

"And it will never run dry?" Furiosa asks, because that's the truly important part.

The dingo nods his head. "Not while the sun rises and sets."

"There's still time to say no," Valkyrie says.

"Then I will be your wife," Furiosa says to the dingo, ignoring Valkyrie's last attempts to talk her out of it.

"Climb on my back," the dingo says after she has said goodbye to her people, her family.

Furiosa reluctantly follows his direction, and no sooner has she settled her weight on his back then he leaps forward, and she has to cling tightly to his rusty-brown fur in order to not be thrown to the ground. They travel far faster than the fastest bike she's ever ridden, and the speed would be exhilarating if it didn't mean she was also traveling a long, long distance away from the only home she's ever known.

 

Midday they pause for a break, the dingo slinking off and coming back with a rabbit dangling from its jaws. After eating she climbs onto its back again, and they travel even faster and further, until the sun starts to set and the world around her is a dark blur.

Finally the dingo slows again, and this time Furiosa can see a massive stone wall in front of them, with a metal gate that opens slowly as they approach.

"Home," the dingo says, and then pauses just after they cross the threshold of the gate. " _Our_ home."

She bites her tongue against saying anything, and takes the opportunity to slip off his back and onto her own feet again. Ahead in the dark she can make out the shape of a large building, which she supposes must be where the dingo lives, though it doesn't make much sense to her.

It's too dark to make out anything along the walk from the gate to the building, but as she climbs the front steps a light blinks into being, and a door springs open. She glances at the dingo for cues and then steps inside, surprised to find herself in what looks for all the world like an old-world house, with straight walls and clean floors and glass in the windows, all lit by fragile electric bulbs rather than the flames she's used to.

"You may go anywhere, do anything," the dingo says, drawing her attention away from the strange surroundings. "You must stay within the garden walls. And..." he trails off, then shakes his head and tries again. "The bedroom must always be dark at night."

Furiosa considers these conditions. She's to be his prisoner, which she expected when she agreed to come away with him. The second is slightly more unusual, but if anything, it will make it easier to pretend she hasn't married herself to a dingo.

"I will stay inside the walls if you never harm me," she says, "and I will leave the bedroom dark if you never force yourself on me."

The dingo looks surprised that she has conditions of her own, insomuch as a dingo can look surprised, but he nods his head. "Agreed."

Then he turns away from her and walks through a doorway, and Furiosa isn't sure whether she's meant to follow him or not. In the time she hesitates the dingo disappears with no apparent care for her, and she decides to instead explore the other doorway.

She walks throughout the entire house, mapping it out in her mind, and finds it much larger than she anticipated. There are rooms devoted to nothing except sitting around in, it seems, and rooms with beds that look entirely unused, and a room filled nearly floor-to-ceiling with books of all sizes and colors. She finds the kitchen and marvels at the gleaming appliances inside, at the bowl of fruit just left sitting out on a table.

Furiosa picks up an apple from the bowl and waits for someone to reprimand her; when no one appears, she wipes the outside of the fruit off on her shirt and then takes a bite. The flesh is sweet and a little tart, so juicy that it runs out of the corners of her mouth. She's never eaten such a delicious apple before and she finishes it in large bites, unable to make herself slow down and make it last longer.

When the apple is gone she eyes up the rest of the fruit in the bowl, but forces herself to turn away and examine the rest of the kitchen. There's real working appliances that she's only grown up hearing about; a fridge with air so cold it makes her shiver, bursting full of foods of all descriptions, a stove that ignites at the press of a button, even a pot that she realizes is for coffee when the smell of it triggers an old buried memory.

All this, and owned by a dingo! And herself too, now. A chuckle escapes her, followed by another, and another, until Furiosa is bent over with mirthless laughter in the middle of this extravagant kitchen.

The laughter is slow to leave, partly, she suspects, because she has the option of laughing or of crying. But she does get herself together again, and grabs a second fruit- a pear this time- before leaving the kitchen to explore the rest of the house.

There's nothing much of interest until she finds a door leading to a garage, even though it only houses a single car. The car's weatherbeaten and poorly taken care of but it's made of beautiful lines, modified in practical ways for more storage, for extra speed.

"Get away from there," the dingo's voice calls out, startling Furiosa away from where she had the bonnet of the car open, exposing the engine.

"What do you care?" she says, "You can't drive."

The dingo bares his teeth and even though she's made him agree not to hurt her, she doesn't trust an animal like him. She slams the bonnet shut and steps away from the car, and the dingo's lips relax, covering his teeth again.

"Don't touch the car," he says.

Furiosa clenches her jaw and wonders how many other rules she's going to uncover, and whether it's better to fight them from the beginning or if she should let it go for the moment. "Tell me why," she says.

The dingo does something with its face that she would call frowning, if it wasn't a dingo. "It's mine," he says after a moment.

"You're a dingo," she says, "You don't need a car."

"It's _mine_ ," the dingo repeats. "Don't touch it."

Furiosa huffs but decides she'd rather not push her limits on her first night, not over something trivial like whether she's allowed to look at a car. Without another word she leaves the garage, deciding that she's going to go find out if the shower fixtures she saw earlier actually work.

The shower does work, it turns out, and she washes herself truly clean for what feels like the first time in her life, dirt of all sorts washing away down the drain while clean warm water rains down on her. There's towels to dry off with afterwards, and left outside the door is a set of clothes, soft and fine.

She looks around the hallway but sees no sign of the dingo. With fresh clothes to change into she can wash her own, she decides, even though these fabrics are too lightweight for her to feel really comfortable in.

When she's clean and dressed and her clothes are hanging to dry over the shower rail, Furiosa ventures out to figure out which bedroom to use for the night. None had seemed used when she was exploring earlier, but she doesn't know if the dingo expects her to go to any particular one.

She doesn't see the dingo at all as she explores, and finally she's tired enough that she just makes the decision to take the room that appeals to her most. The bed is large and not too soft, the sheets clean and blankets thick.

Furiosa puts her gear in the corner of the room and hangs her prosthetic hand off a hook set in the wall, then tucks a knife she brought from the Green Place under her pillow as she climbs into bed.

It's dark and still, utterly quiet, and she's just beginning to drift off when the door opens.

Immediately she's alert, body tensing in place as she feels for the knife. The floor is carpeted so she can't really hear the dingo approaching, but there's something about faint noise that sounds off to her ears, though she can't place what it is. The sheets on the far side of the bed rustle, and the mattress dips under a new weight, and Furiosa holds her breath.

But the dingo only lies down, the only real sign of his presence the noise of his breathing in the dark room.

Minutes pass and nothing happens. Furiosa forces her muscles to relax one by one, though she doesn't let go of the knife. The dingo doesn't so much as twitch in his sleep.

When as much as an hour's gone by and nothing has changed, not even the rhythm of the dingo's breathing, Furiosa lets her vigilance relax. She is sure that should anything happen she will wake up, but there's no immediate danger, and she drifts off into sleep.

 

Furiosa doesn't wake up until the morning, with the sun streaming in through large windows she should have had the forethought to cover. She rolls away from the worst of the light and remembers where she is abruptly when she isn't ensnared in her usual blankets but is instead lying on a luxuriously soft mattress.

She snaps her eyes open and sits upright, but the room that greets her isn't very different than it had been the night before, even if she can see it more clearly now in the sunshine. The other side of the bed is empty, the disturbed blankets the only sign that she didn't make up the dingo crawling in to share the mattress with her.

She gets out of the bed and walks over to the windows, wondering what the daylight will reveal. When the sight registers she gasps; the ground between the house and the wall in the distance is covered in a riot of greens, plants growing thick and healthy and with no apparent concern for the harsh wasteland climate.

Furiosa dresses quickly and makes her way outside, surprised to discover that the air isn't as bitter as she's used to, the sun less intense. The plants wave in a gentle breeze as if saying hello and she tries to identify them all, but can only manage about half a dozen before her knowledge runs out. There are flowers and herbs and vegetables all mixed up, along with tall strong trees and bushes so thick she can't see through them.

The garden extends all the way around the house, but the back yard reveals something even more mind-boggling: a pond of water filled with brightly-colored fish swimming peacefully around each other in graceful arcs.

Furiosa has to take a moment to sit down at that sight. There's a stone bench placed just perfectly to sit and watch the water and she takes advantage of it, mind reeling at being in a place where there are real, live _fish_ to be had.

She spends more time than she intends to and is startled by the arrival of the dingo.

He says nothing, only goes to lie down at the other side of the pond, front paws dipping into the water. Furiosa waits a moment and then gets up to leave, deciding as she goes that she'll have breakfast and then explore the rest of the grounds.

The kitchen is just as extravagantly stocked as she remembered from the night before, and she uncovers fresh eggs and bacon and sausage, and even soft white bread. Cooking on the gas-driven fire is different than what she's used to, the coals of a wood-burning fire, but she manages to make an edible meal without too much trouble.

When she's finished eating she returns to the outdoors, and looks for the dingo but doesn't see it anywhere. She shrugs to herself and starts walking, wanting to explore the garden before the sun gets too high.

There's a mess of hedges that she eventually realizes is meant to be a maze, though it's overgrown and sorely in need of some attention, and more benches to be found. There's even a stone fountain that she is sure would run with water if she could get it fixed up, since the house seems to have a magic never-ending supply.

It takes a bit more than an hour for her to walk the perimeter of the wall at a leisurely pace, making the circumference five, perhaps six kilometers. It's hardly the wide open expanses she's used to and the knowledge that she's stuck here for the rest of her life makes her skin crawl.

 

There isn't much to do around the house except for tend to the garden, and so that's what Furiosa devotes her time to at first. She weeds and transplants and trims until the garden is composed of distinct patches of herbs and vegetables and flowers, she clears around the bases of the fruit and nut trees, she even cleans up the maze of hedges.

But she was never particularly fascinated with gardening, and it isn't long before the most demanding work has been finished and she's left with not much to do.

 

Every night the lights in the bedroom go out whether she remembers to flip the switch or not, and something joins her in the bed. She had assumed it was the dingo, because she's seen no other living creature besides birds and fish, yet she realized one night that the footsteps she was hearing weren't the sort to belong to a four-legged animal at all. Once she realized that, Furiosa spent the rest of the night clutching her knife, turning over the possibilities.

Every morning, whether she's gone to sleep or not, the other side of the bed is empty when the sun rises.

 

The kitchen never runs out of food, and the taps never run out of water. It's so extravagant, so disgustingly wasteful. If Furiosa was allowed out beyond the gates, if she knew the way back to the Green Place from here, she could feed the entire Vuvalini tribe with food to spare.

There's a closet in the room she's picked to be her bedroom that's full of clothing, from the practical to the absurd. She gets used to rotating what she wears since there isn't any reason not to, just as she gets used to washing herself clean every night, whether she's worked in the garden or not.

 

"Will you let me at least _look_?" Furiosa asks the dingo as she stands before the doorway to the garage. It's frustrating to have a project sitting right beyond her grasp, one she knows she'd find more satisfying than doing yet another pass of weeding in the garden.

The dingo bares his teeth, ears flat to his skull and tail waving a slow, stiff arc behind him.

"I won't lay a finger on your ride," she says, pitching her voice to be placating. An idea strikes her, and she raises up her left arm. "I need to get some work done on this, okay?"

He stares at her with distrustful eyes, but slowly his body language relaxes. She never spent much time around dogs before, but she'd picked up how to read him early on, unsure of how his moods might shift if she wasn't careful.

"Don't touch the car," the dingo says.

"I _won't_ ," she reassures him, the urge to roll her eyes rising up in her.

He steps away from the doorway enough for her to get the garage door open, and he follows close on her heels when she enters.

The car is still in its place of honor in the middle of the room, dust gathering on the flat surfaces.

"The tires will get misshapen," Furiosa says as she passes by it to get to the workbench along the far wall.

The dingo growls.

She doesn't really _need_ to do anything to her prosthesis, but there's no reason not to pull it apart to clean and check for wear. It's a better way to spend the day than out in the garden again, staring at the fish as they swim or looking for pests in the strawberry bush.

When she breaks for lunch the dingo follows her to the kitchen, and she realizes that it will be the first time they've eaten together. Furiosa hesitates- what does the dingo usually eat? he must prepare his own food somehow, or maybe the house provides prey for him to catch outside. With no direction from him forthcoming she just makes a double portion of her own meal, and offers the second half to him.

"Want this on the floor, or the table?" she asks, fingers curled around a bowl of soup.

The dingo makes his confused-frowning face, eyes flicking from her face to the bowl in her hand.

When he doesn't answer, Furiosa shrugs and puts the bowl down on the ground next to the table before grabbing her own bowl. The few dogs she's encountered always ate table scraps readily enough, so she doubts there's anything in the soup to make him sick, but it's his own choice whether he wants to eat it or not.

The dingo sniffs at the bowl distrustfully while she starts eating, but then his pink tongue appears and laps up some of the soup. They eat in silence- or rather, they eat without talking. The dingo makes quite a bit of noise as he eats just by virtue of having to slurp every mouthful.

When the food is gone and the dishes are in the appliance that washes the dishes for her, Furiosa returns to the garage, the dingo slinking around behind her like she's going to run for his car the first chance she gets.

"I wish I could have taken my bike," she says when she's settled back at the workbench, a tube of fresh grease at hand. The garage here is as well-stocked as every other room in the house, which means it's better than any workshop she's ever heard of, let alone been in. She'd be able to smooth out all the kinks in her bike's engine if she could have brought it here to work on for a while, she's sure of it.

The dingo makes a slight, non-verbal noise in response.

Furiosa sighs to herself and focuses on greasing up the joints in her prosthesis. Maybe tomorrow she'll go over the leather straps and see if there's anything that's wearing thin, anything that she can replace with what the house provides.

 

They begin to form the habit of eating together. First lunch, and then dinner as well. The dingo rarely speaks and she isn't particularly chatty herself, but there's something about knowing that they _could_ talk if they wanted to that's comforting.

 

"Why not the library?" the dingo asks one day, when Furiosa is restlessly moving from one task to another, bored and unsettled in her newfound life.

"What about it?" she says, not catching his meaning.

"You could read," he says. "Plenty of books."

"Ah," Furiosa says, and flicks her eyes over to him before beheading another dead flower with the scissors she found in the back shed. "I can't. Read, that is."

She knows a few basic words, enough to get by when she visits a town to barter, but there's never been a need to know more. Books are only good for kindling or loo paper, as far as her life has been concerned.

The dingo is quiet, and she glances over at him again to see that there's a frown on his long face.

"I could... teach you?" he says, voice hesitant like he's surprised he's really saying what he's saying.

Furiosa snorts. "What's the point?" She's made it this far without reading, she doesn't really see what advantage there would be to learn how now. Except the reality of her situation crashes down on her again as she realizes that there's no reason _not_ to, not when she's trapped for the rest of her life in this house with its library. At least reading would take up some time from the day.

"Maybe," she amends.

 

Night after night Furiosa lays awake and waits for her mystery bedmate to arrive, trying to discern any clues as to their presence. They have to be the dingo, she thinks, but sometimes it sounds as if they're walking on two legs, not four.

One night she waits until she's absolutely sure they're asleep and she reaches out, as if she's merely stretching in her sleep, but she falters halfway through the motion and draws her arm back in towards herself. Does she _want_ to know what's next to her? What if it's not the dingo but some other creature, something waiting for her to break their unspoken truce? What if it is the dingo, but he's been waiting for her to make some sort of overture before finally making her his wife in more than just name?

She wants to know what it is that's taking up the other half of the bed, but she can't bring herself to upset the balance that's been struck.

 

The library intimidates her, if she's honest with herself. All those words stacked up in there, pressed into books that fill the walls- and she can read a dozen or so, the rest a vague gibberish of letters that she's never paid much attention to.

The dingo seems to like dozing in there in the afternoons, dusty brown body stretched out on a cushioned window seat, eyes closed against the warm filtered sunlight. He'll crack an eye open if she passes through but doesn't otherwise move, content in a way she doesn't really associate with him.

"Alright," Furiosa says, and grabs a book at random off the shelves. "What does this one say?" the cover is red, with pressed-gold abstract shapes around the edges.

The dingo lets out a sighing breath and gets up from his seat, joints cracking as he stretches. He pads over to see the book she's holding out.

"That's poetry," he says, and shakes his head. "Bad starting place."

Furiosa looks down at the book and shrugs. She doesn't care what the words are so long as she learns how to read them, but if he doesn't want to read it, she'll pick another.

She puts the red book back on the shelf and grabs a blue one. "This?"

"Ah," the dingo says, and walks over to the shelf himself. He noses around some of the books before picking one. He pulls it out of the shelf himself, teeth delicate around the cover. It's tall and thin, and the cover is a bright illustration of a dog driving a car.

Furiosa raises an eyebrow. "Is that for kids?"

The dingo looks shifty, but nods. "The words are easy," he says when he's set the book on the ground, freeing up his mouth.

She looks down at the book and very nearly gets up to leave the library. "No," she says firmly. "I'm not reading that."

He looks between the book and her, then sighs. He picks another book, this one devoid of any cartoons. "Mmhm?"

The book he has is thick, far thicker than the ones she'd first grabbed. Furiosa has a feeling he's picked something trickier than average to discourage her into going with something written for children, but she doesn't mind. She's stubborn.

"Sure," she says.

They arrange themselves awkwardly; the book isn't that large, and the print is small, so they have to be close to one another in order to both read. She can feel the warmth of the dingo against her leg when they've settled into place, the slow drag of his ribs as he breathes. It's strange to realize that she hasn't touched another living creature since she hugged Valkyrie goodbye, excepting the ride on the dingo's back to get here.

"Ready?" the dingo says, and waits for her to nod her head. "Hmm," he hums, head cocked to the side. "Maybe... put your finger on the word."

"Which word?" she asks, wondering with a sudden twist if he's asking her to find the word ‘ready' on the page, and demonstrating how much of a fool she is.

"The first," he says. "Follow along."

Furiosa relaxes again slightly, and moves her finger over to the first word on the page.

"‘When'," the dingo begins.

"When," she parrots back, trying to attach that word to the shapes she sees before her.

"‘Mister'," he continues, and they proceed to read the entire first sentence in this manner. When she reaches the period at the end Furiosa blows out a breath; she can repeat the dingo's words easily enough, but the markings on the page are just a soup of letters that don't seem to add up to anything.

"What's the sixth word?" the dingo asks.

Furiosa runs her finger along the words, reading off what she remembers of the sentence in her head to find the right place. "Bag?"

"Spell it," he says.

She grits her teeth and stares at the letters on the page. There's only three, and she isn't stupid, this should be easy. But she doesn't know that she even has the right word in front of her, and she doesn't know which letter is which, and this suddenly seems like a much stupider idea than it had ten minutes ago.

"I can't," she says.

The dingo turns his head to look at her, and she doesn't care that there's clearly magic at work here, she cannot stand being looked down on by an _animal_. Furiosa snaps the book shut and lurches up to her feet. "This was a mistake," she says.

The dingo flinches out of the way but stays where he was as she stuffs the book into a random shelf and stalks out of the library.

 

It takes several days before she's calm enough to consider trying again. The dingo says nothing one way or another until she steps foot in the library again, resolved to try as hard as she can because what else is there to pass the time with?

"We need to start with letters," he says when she seats herself on the floor where they'd tried reading the other day.

"Fine," Furiosa says.

He falters a little, like he'd expected her to put up a fight, but nods. "I can't write," he says, not looking at her.

"Okay," she says.

The dingo grabs the slim children's book from the shelf and Furiosa grits her teeth against the indignity of it. To her surprise he also produces a second book, and a few pencils.

"You'll write," he says once he's dropped the new book in her lap. It's all blank inside, she discovers, nothing but pale blue lines marking the pages.

This time they begin by reciting the alphabet, and then the dingo laboriously flips the pages of the book and points to individual letters with a pencil held in his jaws. Furiosa copies each letter as exactly as she can, the motions unfamiliar to her.

Finally she has all twenty-six in a row down the page, and they drill the names of them a few times.

It's frustrating to have to start at such a basic level but by the time they break for lunch Furiosa can accurately name any letter the dingo points to with only a little hesitation, which she counts as a success.

After lunch she's apparently forgotten more than half of them, and nearly storms out of the library again.

 

She progresses through her lessons slowly, but she does progress. From drilling letters to working on simple words, Furiosa feels a little more confident each day in her ability to one day learn to read a thick book like the one the dingo had taunted her with the first day.

They develop a routine where Furiosa will spend the first half of the day on her own, working in the garden or on her prosthesis or doing whatever else catches her fancy, and after eating lunch together she and the dingo will visit the library to work on teaching her to read.

 

"What kind of car is it?" Furiosa asks one day when the dingo is loafing around the garage with her. She doesn't know cars as well as she knows bikes, considering most of the Vuvalini ride rather than drive, but there's nothing else mechanical in the house.

The dingo doesn't seem nearly as suspicious of her intentions now as he had originally, and answers easily. "Pursuit Special," he says, and sighs. "Ford Falcon"

"You found an Interceptor?" she asks, surprised. No wonder she thought she could see traces of bronze paint right around where an emblem would sit.

"Stole," the dingo corrects, and stares pensively at the car.

Furiosa looks at it with him; it's certainly a fine looking specimen, or it would be if the rust and dust were taken care of. That he stole such an impressive car and is now just letting it rot away frustrates her to no end, even if there isn't any use for it when he's a dog and she's trapped inside the compound.

"You can rotate the tires," he says after a long few minutes of silence.

She can't stop the amused huff of breath that leaves her. So now he's doing her a favor by letting her service the car? Still, she has to admit that she'd rather do what she can to stop it from disintegrating entirely.

It doesn't take long at all to get the tires rotated, though she's not confident that the flat spots already developed will ever recover. The dingo watches her warily the entire time, as if she might purposefully sabotage the job.

 

She notices books in the kitchen, full of pictures of food and lists of words that seem simple enough. With the dingo's help to read them correctly she puts in a solid effort at executing the recipes, the magic of the house providing every ingredient with ease, no matter how bizarre.

Furiosa longs again for some way to bring this wealth to the Green Place, for some way to bring her clan here and share in her wealth. But she knows even without asking that it's out of the question- she bartered herself away for their continued safety, for their own source of water and seeds that promised to grow high yields. It'll just have to be enough to know they're provided for almost as well as she is.

Her cooking is functional at best, but the dingo proves to have some amount of flair in the kitchen himself, prompting her to stir and slice and turn things like he remembers doing it all himself. And maybe he does- she doesn't think he was always a dingo, not when there's a car sitting in the garage that he claims to have stolen, when he clearly doesn't act like any true animal.

 

She has a breakthrough with her reading lessons, the simple words on the page suddenly making sense in a way they hadn't before, when she was bouncing between memorizing their order and sounding out the individual letters. As a reward, the dingo lets her change out the fluids in the car.

"This is ridiculous," Furiosa says when she's done changing the oil, glad to have her hands dirty again even if the reason why is fairly silly. "Just let me do the maintenance work, okay?"

The dingo snaps his teeth at her, but she's not afraid of him.

"I won't hurt it," she says, looking him straight in the eye. "Okay? I'll take care of her."

He growls, but she can see that he's deflating. She gets no answer that day, but the next day he finds her as she's walking around the maze of hedges and tells her that she can work on his car, if she really has to, but only when he's there.

"Deal," she replies, and sticks her hand out as if he can return her handshake. To her surprise he lifts up a paw and places it almost delicately in her palm, and the gesture startles a pleased laugh out of her.

 

The question of who or what is on the other side of the bed nags at her, especially now that her relationship with the dingo has improved so much from where they started. Furiosa asks him outright if he spends the night in the same bed as her, but no matter how she words the question, he doesn't give any sort of an answer.

Which means it might be him, or it might be something else altogether. Is it some sort of price for staying here, using the magic of the house? Will she find that one day whatever it is- monster or man or beast- reaches across the bed for her and takes what it feels is due?

The dingo had agreed not to force itself on her and she believes that he'll hold to that promise, but it might not be the dingo in the bed with her. And without knowing how long she can expect to be trapped here in this house, the night when something changes might be a day away or a thousand- she has no way of knowing.

 

The car shapes itself up little by little, just like her reading skills. She grinds away what rust she can, seals over what she can't. The mechanics are starving for a bit of care and she provides it gladly, pacing herself so she doesn't run out of work too quickly.

There are a half dozen children's books in the library and twice as many cookbooks in the kitchen and it's not long before Furiosa has read them all. Whether she can read them because she can _read_ or because she's memorized them by now she isn't sure, but one day after lunch the dingo grabs a new book off the shelves and says they should try it out.

It's not the thick tome he first had her try, but rather something lighter, about a mystery he says. The words are denser, the text smaller, and there are no pictures to help out their meaning. Still Furiosa is determined, and she plods through the novel a word at a time, writing down the ones she doesn't already know so she can review them later.

 

Things might have progressed like that for much, much longer, except that one night Furiosa wakes from a nightmare with a scream in her throat.

Whatever is on the other side of the bed stirs, sheets rustling minutely, but they make no other sound, even as she gasps for breath.

"I need to go back," she says into the dark room. She can still see the horrible images before her eyes, can feel the absolute certainty that such things are going to happen if she isn't here to stop any of it.

Only silence answers her.

"Please," she says, hand once again reaching for the other side of the bed, only to fall short. "My family," she says, "They need me. I need to go back."

She doesn't get a reply, not until it's just before dawn and the presence on the other side of the mattress slips off the bed, and retreats down the hall. Furiosa gets up as soon as they're gone and flips on the light, bathing the room in brightness against the oppressive dark the windows are letting in.

What is she doing? She's playing house with a creature, with so much luxury she's practically choking on it. And back home the Green Place could be getting razed to the ground this very moment, her mothers and sisters taken into a far harsher captivity than she's found herself in.

Furiosa dresses in her old clothes- strange how unfamiliar they feel now, after she's become used to changing in and out of different clothes every day- and storms down to the kitchen to wait for the dingo to appear.

It seems to take a long, long time, but finally he slinks in through the doorway, his muzzle smeared with red.

"I need to leave," she says with no preamble. "Just for a visit. I have to see my family again, I have to know they're safe."

The dingo blinks and sits down, and she can see no hint in his eyes that he was or was not in the room with her last night when she woke up screaming and crying. "You can't," he says.

Furiosa shakes her head and clenches her hand so hard that her nails cut into her skin. "I need to. Just for a few days. A _single_ day. I need to know if they're okay, if Valkyrie is okay, and Maadie, and Keeper..."

The dingo regards her silently for a long, long stretch of minutes.

"I'll come back," she says, "I promise. but I need to see them."

After what feels like an eternity of waiting, the dingo nods his head. "One day," he says. "You tell them nothing of this place."

"Deal," Furiosa says, and it's the easiest agreement she thinks she's ever made. Already the knot of panic in her gut is easing, just knowing that she'll be able to see for herself whether everything is as it should be.

They walk to the front gate together, and then the dingo has her again climb onto his back.

"We could take that car..." she says, halfway teasing. The car is ready to run thanks to all the work she's put in, but the house is a far greater distance away than she thinks even the fastest car can travel in a day.

The dingo growls low in his throat and repeats his command for her to climb onto his back. This time Furiosa complies, grabbing tight to the fur over his neck, and as he leaps forward the gate springs open to allow them access to the outside world.

The journey takes all day, just as it had the last time, and they still travel too fast for her to make any sense of landmarks or even direction.

They arrive at the edge of the Green Place just as the sun is starting to set, and Furiosa jumps off the dingo's back as soon as he slows down enough to allow the maneuver. To her immense relief, the place is not a burned-out husk. It actually looks just about the same as when she left it, with only some tents moved around and crops at different stages of growth.

She has no idea if a sentry has seen her- a dingo is hardly the type of target they usually orient themselves towards- and she doesn't want to find out via a bullet to the head. Instead she calls out loudly, announcing her presence.

There's an almost immediate reply, a long ululating call of the all-clear, and Furiosa barely pays any attention to whether the dingo is following or not as she makes for the camp.

"Furiosa!" Valkyrie calls out as she runs over. Furiosa gladly meets her approach and greets her forehead-to-forehead before being wrapped in a firm hug. "I thought for sure you'd been eaten"

Furiosa shakes her head, relief at seeing Valkyrie and the Green Place safe having stopped up her tongue.

"So did it let you go?" Valkyrie asks, breaking off the hug to let others approach.

"I'm only visiting," Furiosa says. "Just for the day."

"A day? That's ridiculous! We haven't seen you in six months and that dog is giving you a _day_?"

"You're not staying?" Mellita asks, the circle of curious listeners tightening.

Furiosa hadn't realized it had been quite so long since she saw her people last, and the number she's presented with now is slightly overwhelming. She shakes her head in answer, and allows Valkyrie to tug her by the elbow over to the nearest fire.

"I'm only visiting," she repeats. The dingo is nowhere to be seen and she's grateful to have some privacy away from him, even if she feels strange to not have him nearby like she's become used to.

"Have some food, you must be starving," Maadie says, and snaps for someone to fetch food for her.

"It's actually good there," Furiosa says, wondering how much she can say without giving away anything too detailed. "We have enough food."

Valkyrie scoffs. "What sort of food does a dingo eat? Roadkill?"

Furiosa just shakes her head and doesn't elaborate. A dish of watery barley-and-lentil soup is brought to her, along with some slightly charred flatcakes. It's the sort of food she's eaten her entire life but it seems paltry compared to what she's becoming used to coming out of the magic kitchen, even if she _does_ have to cook it all herself. She eats slowly, in no great rush to fill her belly, and tells the people who've gathered around to see her as much as she feels comfortable sharing about her new life.

In return they share their own good fortune, how the well has provided sweet clean water even when other water sources have started drying up, how the ammo and guzzoline the dingo brought to them is being used to good effect.

Somewhere along the way moonshine is brought out, as it often is, and because it's a celebration Furiosa drinks- and because it's _her_ celebration she's pressed into drinking more than she ordinarily might, until the edges of the night are warm and fuzzy.

When finally everyone has run out of things to say, Furiosa and Valkyrie retreat to the tent they once shared, though her bedroll is no longer there waiting for her.

"But really," Valkyrie says as they bundle themselves under the blankets, more human contact than Furiosa has had in months, "How are things? I know it said it wanted you for a wife, but it's not... Right?"

"It's fine, it really is," she replies. "I wouldn't lie about that." Her mind drifts to the mystery of the shared bed, and how Valkyrie would react to knowing it's entirely possible that she's spending each night with a monster just a handspan away.

"You're married to a _dingo_ ," Valkyrie says with a snort. "How is that fine?"

"I have a roof over my head, and food to eat," Furiosa says. "And so do you all. Nothing else matters."

Valkyrie rolls over abruptly to face her. "What sort of 'nothing else' doesn't matter?"

"It's nothing," Furiosa says, but her mind is circling around the idea of sharing with Valkyrie now, and the 'shine she's had makes her tongue looser than it otherwise would be. "You have to promise not to tell."

Valkyrie promises, of course, and listens attentively as Furiosa describes her nightly visitor, and her uncertainty as to their identity or reason for being there.

"You should sleep with a knife!" Valkyrie says.

"I do," Furiosa replies, and then pauses to reconsider. "I did, anyway."

" _Did_?" Valkyrie says, and it's too dark to actually make out her expression but Furiosa can imagine it clearly, the creased brow as she frowns in concern. "Nuh-uh. Not good enough. You could die, Furi! Some monster could have its way with you!"

"How much moonshine did you have?" Furiosa asks, sensing that the conversation is getting away from them, even if she'd had the same concerns herself, albeit more quietly.

"You need to find out what's in your bed," Valkyrie says, ignoring her question. "What if you just lit a light?"

Furiosa shakes her head, though it won't be seen in the dark tent. "They go out automatically," she says.

"Have you even _tried_?" Valkyrie says. "Okay, okay. Leave it to me, okay?"

"Leave what to you?" Furiosa asks, but she doesn't get an answer, just another reassurance that Valkyrie has a plan. They talk for a while more, Furiosa sharing more of her life at the house than she really should, but eventually they fall asleep.

 

Furiosa spends as much time as she can the next day with as many people as she can, simply because she has no idea if she'll ever see any of them ever again. It hadn't been real the first time she left, hadn't seemed final. Now she knows that the dingo may never be swayed into letting her visit the Green Place ever again and she wants to soak in as much of her old life as she can.

Her bike's already been repurposed, given to another in the tribe and modified to suit their tastes rather than her own. It hurts, but it's only practical.

Now that people have had time to adjust to her absence, a few take her aside and press gifts into her hands- things that once belonged to her mothers, or something they borrowed and never returned, or just tokens they thought she would have liked had she been around- and Furiosa doesn't know what to do with any of it. She accepts the gifts, of course, but the knowledge that she's been missed as more than just another able body to defend the Green Place is surprising to her, who always saw Valkyrie as her main bridge to the rest of the Vuvalini.

As the sun starts setting again, she begins to look for the shape of the dingo on the horizon. She doesn't know when he'll appear- at the exact moment when he dropped her off the day before? will he wait until the next morning?- but she knows better than to let herself think that he won't eventually come to collect her.

Valkyrie pulls her into the cook tent during dinner prep, something bundled in her arms. "Okay, I've got it," she says.

"Got what?" Furiosa replies dubiously.

"What we were talking about last night," Valkyrie says, unperturbed to be the only one who knows what she's talking about. "So you know what you're dealing with when you get back there."

Their conversation from the night before is a fuzzy memory thanks to the moonshine she'd had, but Furiosa does think she remembers talking about the mystery of her sleeping arrangements. "Oh?"

Valkyrie unfolds a patterned scarf- one Furiosa is pretty sure had once been hers before mysteriously going missing ages ago- to reveal a short fat candle. "The wick's infused with magnesium," Valkyrie says, "Once it's lit, it'll stay lit until you drown the sucker in water. It even lights itself if it's blown out!"

Furiosa looks down at the candle; it appears perfectly ordinary to her, if a little misshapen from being stored improperly in the heat. "Uh-huh," she replies.

"You don't have to use it," Valkyrie says, "But... I wanted you to have the option. You should know what you're getting into."

Furiosa nods, and takes the candle as well as the scarf. She tucks the candle into one of the pouches around her waist and wraps the scarf around her neck before Valkyrie can try and take it back. It smells like home, herbs and sand and the mustiness that comes from being stored for a long time.

"Thank you," she says, and finds that she has to blink away a sudden influx of moisture from her eyes.

 

The dingo appears not long after, and this time Furiosa takes her time saying her goodbyes now that she knows what the reality of living away from her tribe is really like.

And then she climbs onto the dingo's back once more and is away, back to the magic house she's sentenced herself to spend the rest of her life in.

 

She packs away carefully the few gifts she'd taken with her when they arrive back at the house. Though the dingo has never seemed to go through her belongings before, meager though they are, she doesn't entirely trust that he won't get curious.

The placement of the candle vexes her the most. Surely the dingo wouldn't be able to guess her purpose for owning it, but for what reason would she have a candle in a house that runs electric lights? Eventually Furiosa just places it in the little drawer besides the bed, reasoning that the closer to plain sight it is, the less suspicious it will come across.

 

It seems strange to settle back into the life they've begun, though there isn't any other real option. The reading lessons resume, and Furiosa works on the car under the dingo's watchful eye, and she starts to bring in harvests from the garden.

It's idyllic, if stifling.

She gets the fountain working over the course of several long days spent digging up old piping and repairing it as best she can, and then has to shut off the pump for it almost immediately because the sight of all that water just splashing about with no purpose makes her sick to her stomach. At least the pond keeps fish alive, and is deep enough to wade into on the rare days when the heat climbs up to the levels she's familiar with.

 

And still, every night she feels some unknown presence climb into bed besides her in the pitch dark. Furiosa tries asking the dingo about it again, being as sly with her words as as she can muster in order to trick out some sort of information.

But the dingo is persistently silent, to the point where she begins to wonder if there's magic involved, if he has some sort of spell on him that makes it so he _can't_ share any information. He's certainly slipped out little facts about his life before without seeming to mean to, like the fact that she isn't his first wife, or that he didn't always live in the magic house.

 

Finally she can take it no more. Furiosa stays awake staring at the dark ceiling and listens to the slow, rhythmic breathing of whatever is in the bed next to her, until she is certain that they are asleep.

With slow movements she gets out of bed, as if she's just taking a trip down the hall to the bathroom. When the presence doesn't stir she eases open the bedside drawer and extracts the candle Valkyrie gave her, as well as the flint and striker that she used to keep with her daily gear.

She grasps the candle with her left elbow and fumbles with the striker, barely daring to breathe, until with one last rasping spray of sparks the wick of the candle catches.

She sets the striker down and takes the candle in hand instead. There's been no pause in the breathing pattern, no hint that the noise or the soft glow of light has woken whoever it is.

Furiosa creeps around the bed, yet even as slow as she moves the wind is still enough to blow out the candle. She grimaces in the sudden dark, sure that she's going to have to get the flint again- or that despite Valkyrie's claims, the candle simply won't stay lit after all against whatever magic makes the room dark- when to her surprise, the wick shoots off a few small sparks, and ignites again.

The renewed flame looks exactly the same as the first one, and rather than stand there puzzling out _how_ it happened, Furiosa starts walking again to take advantage of her luck.

The glow from the candle is more than enough to see by, especially after her eyes spent the last hour or so adjusting to the pitch blackness of the room, so she can clearly see the form sleeping on the bed when she walks up to their side.

It's not the dingo, nor is it some new monster. It's a man.

He looks entirely asleep, eyes shut, face lax, chest rising and falling underneath the covers. Furiosa can't completely believe her eyes. All her worrying, for this? The thing sharing her bed is just a man- a handsome one at that, with straight even features and hints of a body well filled with strong muscle.

She spends a long moment just staring at him, still reeling from the surprise that she's sleeping besides so ordinary a thing as a man. So long, in fact, that a droplet of wax from the burning candle drips down onto the man's exposed shoulder.

His eyes fly open at once and Furiosa jerks back, but the damage has been done.

Shock and something like betrayal color his features as he sits upright, brows drawn down heavily over eyes that are the exact same shade as the dingo's.

"No," he says, and his voice too is familiar, "No!"

"Sorry," Furiosa says, and hastily tries to smother the candle as if that will make things right.

"Four more months," the man says, his hands fisting into the sheets pooling over his lap. "That's all that was left. This curse..."

She shakes her head, not understanding. The candle catches flame again on its own, like now that she's lit it it refuses to go dark again, just as she can't take away the fact that she broke their deal.

The usual night's silence is broken by the sound of engines approaching, still a distant ways away, and the man lurches up out of bed with a wild expression on his face. "Go," he says, "You need to go. She's coming, she can't catch you..."

"Who?" Furiosa asks, but gets no reply. The man is pulling on clothes she's never seen before, thick leather pants and something that flashes like metal, a jacket that seemingly materializes out of the shadows cast by the flickering candle.

The roaring of engines gets louder and louder, the entire house seeming to shake with their approach. Or- it really _is_ shaking, she realizes when one of the window panes shatters abruptly, letting in a harshly cold breeze unlike the usual mild temperatures.

"Get out," the man says, fully dressed and looking at her with wide, sad eyes, "It's me she wants."

" _Who_?" Furiosa repeats, but he only shakes his head. Lights flicker on in the bedroom suddenly, illuminating everything in harsh electric light, and she realizes that she's still clutching the damned candle.

The man brushes past her to leave down the hallway, and she hastily pulls on her boots before following him. All around her the house is quaking as the noise from outside climbs to deafening levels, pictures falling off the walls and doors swinging madly, windows shattering left and right.

The house is falling apart, she realizes from a place that feels far calmer than she thinks it should. Maybe it's from the rattling of the powerful engines outside- but maybe it's because she broke her agreement with the dingo and now the spell that keeps the house together is dissolving.

The engines cut off abruptly and Furiosa makes it down the stairs just in time to see the man standing in the open front door, silhouetted by bright headlights aimed his way.

"Well well," a woman's voice calls out, "Looks like you broke our deal."

The man grunts, and the woman laughs.

"Come along nice and easy now, there's a good boy."

"What's going on?" Furiosa asks, wishing she was prepared for such an abrupt change of events.

The man twitches, but doesn't look over his shoulder at her.

In front of him the front lawn is full of rubble from the bashed-down wall, the garden she worked so hard to care for trampled underneath multiple sets of tires. She can't see very much thanks to the bright lights aimed their way but she does see the form of a tall imposing woman, dressed all in something that glitters like metal.

"You had your chance," the woman says, "Don't make me get angry."

The man takes a jerky step forward, head hanging low, and then another. He glances back towards the house, towards her, then abruptly turns and breaks into a run like a frightened animal.

The woman in metal laughs, and Furiosa watches as more figures detach from the cars and chase the man down, piling up on him and bringing him to the ground.

"What are you doing?" she calls out, stepping forward like she'll be able to fight off such a party, "What do you want with him?"

"Oh look, your pet's come to say goodbye," the woman says scornfully. "I must thank you, it's all thanks to you that I have my property back."

Furiosa shakes her head, but she can't deny that she broke her agreement with the dingo-who-might-be-a-man to keep the bedroom dark. "Where are you taking him?"

She watches as the man is grabbed and shoved into one of the vehicles, taking half a step forward because she wants to go and grab him back, but knowing that she's sorely outnumbered and out of her depth.

The woman doesn't reply, just shakes out her hair with a laugh as she turns and makes for one of the cars.

Furiosa does lunge at her then, but someone she hadn't kept sight of in the blinding lights grabs her around the middle, arresting her movements.

"Let go of me!" she says as she struggles. She tries to fight them off but she can't make sense of the person seeming to have two heads, and they use their grip on her to slam her against the ground, knocking the air out of her.

The few moments it takes her to regain her footing is all that's needed for the fleet of cars to start their engines again, and by the time Furiosa has staggered back to her feet they're already in motion.

"Wait!" she croaks out, but of course they don't wait. The cars roar and churn up the ground beneath them as they depart, streaking away from the walled house in a massive formation.

"Wait," she repeats, making it as far as the boundary where the wall used to stand, before they knocked it down to get in.

Furiosa stands there for a moment in the dark, blinking back water from her eyes. What has she done? And all because she was a little curious? She turns away from the place where the cars disappeared and sees that the house hasn't entirely crumbled to dust in the meantime.

Instead there are flames lighting up the night air, and now that she realizes this she can smell thick smoke, can hear the crackle of fire. The candle! It must have lit itself again, just like Valkyrie promised it would, and fallen off the table to light the house on fire.

Furiosa runs back to the house but already knows there's nothing she can do to put out the blaze; it's too large, her ability to wield water and sand limited severely compared to what a proper firefighting crew would be able to put out.

Smoke pours down the staircase and she doesn't even try to battle it in order to see if there's anything worth saving up on the second floor. What does any of it matter, anyway?

She makes her way to the garage instead, glad that she'd left her prosthesis on the worktable the night before, intending to do some work on one of the actuators. She straps it on now and then turns to the car sitting in the middle of the room, gleaming with the care she was allowed to finally put into it.

As far as she can tell, the car is the one belonging the dingo-who-might-be-a-man had claimed for his own. She has no right to take it, except that he's been taken himself, and the thing will only burn if she leaves it here.

Furiosa takes the keys off their place on the wall and gets into the driver's seat, willing the engine to not play around and just start up. With a roar it complies, rumbling obediently to life.

She puts it into gear and presses down on the accelerator, unsure of where she's going but knowing that she has to leave.

She can either head in the direction of home, return to the Green Place and forget that any of these past months ever happened... Or she can follow the direction that the fleet of cars left in, and track down the man-who-might-have-been-a-dingo from the people who've taken him captive.

Why should she care about him, though? Even if she apparently is the reason that he was taken captive, his rescue isn't her responsibility.

If he really is the dingo, though, then she has to admit that she feels guilty over what's happened. She didn't mean to do anything other than find out what was sleeping on the other side of the bed, didn't mean to bring down a horde of enemies on his head, didn't mean to destroy the magic house and the life they were living inside of it.

Furiosa swings the wheel around to follow the tracks of the people who've taken him. The car has no headlights and she can't really see with the moon barely a sliver, but she doesn't dare wait for morning.

 

She drives through the night and on into the next day, until she has to admit that the wind has scoured the tire tracks from the sand and she's lost the trail.

She gets out of the car and stretches her legs, trying in vain to find any last trace to follow. They'd been traveling a fairly straight line so far but that doesn't mean that they won't take a turn at any moment, and she'll have no way of knowing.

Maybe she _should_ turn around and go back to the Green Place, she thinks, and then smothers the thought. She has to make things right, has to get the dingo-man away from the enemies she exposed him to.

There's plenty of guzz in the tank, and she'd even talked the dingo into letting her stock up the water and rations even though neither had any plan of taking the car out. Furiosa is thankful for this as she crunches on a dried roadcake and plans her next move. She'll continue onward in the direction she's been traveling in so far, she decides, and ask the first people she comes across if they have any information. Surely such a large fleet of cars will have drawn _some_ attention.

 

Three days after she sets out from the ruined house, she comes across the borders of some settlement or other. It's large and well-defended, and she's cautious as she approaches.

To her surprise, the person who meets her in the flat open space around their walls shows no hostility, but rather smiles and waves.

"Road Warrior!" they call out, as if they know her.

"I'm looking for information," Furiosa calls back, regretful that there isn't a single firearm in the car.

This brings the person up short, and they nose in closer, curiosity written all over their face. "Where you'd get that car?" they ask, peering in through the window at her.

"From the man it belongs to," she says, picking her words carefully. She doesn't want to outright lie, but they clearly are friendly with the owner if this is how they react to the sight of his car. "We worked on it together." The problem is, she doesn't know if they know the dingo-man, or whoever he said he stole the car from.

"Hmm," the person says, "Maybe you'd better come this way. The chief will want to speak to you, I reckon."

Furiosa spends a moment gauging their character before she nods, and puts the car back into gear to follow them inside the walls of their settlement.

They have a good set-up here, she's surprised to see, less mobile than her own Green Place and instead clustered around what she recognizes as a small oil derrick, pumping away in smooth movements.

"Park here," her escort says, and she doesn't like the idea of leaving the car unattended, but she sees no real alternative.

They walk a short ways through the village, curious eyes following them, before arriving at a modest hut sealed with a skin for a door.

"Chief," her escort says, and raps on the wood of the doorframe, "Visitor for you."

After a moment the door is pushed aside, and a man with wild graying-blonde hair thrusts his head out. "What is it?"

"She came in on the Road Warrior's car," her escort says. "Says she knows him."

"That so?" the chief says, and looks her over with sharp eyes.

"I'm looking for someone," Furiosa says, "A big war party took him away. You seen it pass by?"

"War parties don't come up here," the chief says with a shake of his head. "Not if they know what's good for them. But come, let's talk. How did you come across that car?"

"I'm looking for the man it belongs to," she says. "He's the one the war party took."

"Hmm," the chief says, and rubs over his chin. "Let's talk inside." He pulls aside the leather door to reveal a modest room, lit primarily by a hole in the ceiling.

Furiosa reluctantly follows him inside, leaving her escort at the doorway. There are worn cushions on the floor and the chief gestures for her to take one, folding himself down to sit on another.

"Describe this man you're looking for," he says.

She'd hardly seen him, not as a human, but even so she can recall his face easily enough. "He has light skin and brown hair," she says, "Blue eyes. He's about my height. There's something the matter with his left leg."

The chief nods thoughtfully. "And he gave you his car?"

She makes herself sit straight and steady, even as her stretching of the truth is directly addressed. "He left it in my care," she says, which is true in a way. He certainly hadn't said anything about it when he was being taken. "Do you know anything of a woman who commands a fleet of cars?"

"There are many women in the wastes," the chief says with a shake of his head.

"They were headed this way," Furiosa says, "Surely you heard of them passing by."

"Passing this way? No," he says, "There's nothing more north than us. You've reached the the edge of the world, coming here."

"Thank you," she says tightly. This was a waste of time.

"Did you see anything else of this woman?" the chief asks.

"She was dressed in armor," she says, "And one of her people had two heads."

"Hmm," he says, and rubs over his chin again. "Was she tall? Dark skin, blonde hair? Talked about quid pro quo a lot?"

Furiosa isn't sure what the woman looked like, and doesn't know what the last phrase means, but if her own description sparked off a connection, she's willing to follow what leads she can get. "What can you tell me about her?"

"That's Aunty Entity," the chief says. "She runs Bartertown and Underworld besides. I can't say it's impossible for the Road Warrior to have gotten tangled up with her... But, well, it would be better if he hadn't."

"Where can I find her?" she asks. The names are unfamiliar, but that means little- there's plenty of Wasteland that she hasn't heard of.

"Not here, that's for sure," he says. "There's a city to the east, they might be able to give you better directions."

It's an almost useless lead, but she doesn't think that the chief is lying about this being the northernmost territory in the area- and if that's true, then she has to turn one way or the other, anyway.

"And I think..." he says, trailing off as he abruptly gets off his cushion to stand, knees popping at the action. He rifles through a basket in the corner of his shack and comes up with a battered piece of metal, which she realizes after a moment is actually a boomerang. "You might find this useful. Take care to catch it with that fake hand of yours, now."

She blinks in surprise but accepts the boomerang. The metal is cold beneath her fingers, the edge sharp despite its worn appearance. "Thank you," she says, and tucks the weapon into the belt around her hips.

She leaves the village not long after, following a new set of directions. She doesn't like that she's veering off from the dingo-man's last known trajectory, but the war party would have had to have turned at some point as well.

 

Several days after setting out, Furiosa sees little lights in the distance, exactly as the chief of the northern tribe had described. She slows the car down and approaches cautiously, for though they were described to her as a means to call wanderers home, she wouldn't put it past anyone to use the lights as a lure for the unwary, either.

No one stops her as she drives over the ancient roads; no one attacks her, either. There are signs up, some with words and some with pictures, and Furiosa realizes that she can read both types, now. That she has to go slow and fumble over the words that are unfamiliar but that she can _read_ what the signs say instead of guessing.

'Food' this one says, 'Sleep' another, and 'Cars' and 'Guzz'- a word she recognized even before the dingo taught her the trick of letters for real. She brings the car warily into a sheltered space with other cars, and negotiates for it to be left alone for the rest of the day and night.

"I'm looking for Aunty Entity," she tells the owner of the car lot when she's settled the down payment amount.

"She ain't here," they say with a shake of their head.

"Do you know where Bartertown is?" Furiosa asks.

"Nah," they say, "But you wanna talk to Mr Skyfish about places, he's the mappist ‘round here."

She nods in acknowledgement and gets directions to see this mappist, warily traversing the old-style city roads to get from one half-crumbled building to another. A sniper could take her or anyone else on the streets out in a flash like this, but no one appears from the high crags to shoot anyone down.

The mappist keeps an office high up in one of the tall buildings, where the walls are papered over in scribbles and outlines.

"I'm looking for the way to Bartertown," Furiosa says when it's her turn to address the man that must be Mr Skyfish.

"Bartertown? Best stay away from there," Skyfish replies. "Why not someplace nicer? Roadie like you could use a vacay."

She shakes her head. "I'm looking for Aunty Entity."

"That's a name I hasn't heard in a while," a woman says as she steps in through the open doorway. "What are you wanting with her?"

"She took someone from me," Furiosa says, trying to gauge the newcomer's interest in the topic.

"Aunty Entity'll do that, you let her," the woman says, and thrusts out a hand like she expects Furiosa to grab hold of it with her own. "Name's Savannah."

"Furiosa," she replies. "Does this mean you know where Bartertown is?"

Savannah and Skyfish share a look between them. "It's not on any map," Skyfish says. "You really wanna go? Might be this person of yours is living the high life."

"He was taken against his will," Furiosa says with a shake of her head.

"Pigkiller will know the way," Savannah says after a moment. "But he's not here."

"He's out west," Skyfish agrees with a nod.

"Where can I find him?" Furiosa asks.

"There's a city to the west," Skyfish says, and gestures fluidly to one of the massive maps that take up most of the room's intact wall space. "He'll be there, 'less he's gone off somewhere else."

It's hardly the sort of directions she wants to rely on, but Furiosa swallows down her protests and acknowledges that any lead is better than none, especially now that she has no hope of tracking down the wary party on her own.

"You're really set on tracking down Aunty Entity?" Savannah says, and Furiosa nods. Savannah exchanges a look with Skyfish.

"You'd best be taking this," he says, and rifles through a drawer of his desk before coming up with a large black disk. "Careful with it now, the sonic's not meant for everyone."

It's a sound-record, Furiosa realizes as she accepts the disk, worn down and warped with time, like the kind Mozzie used to play on the old gramophone. "Thank you," she says.

 

It takes her several days to follow their directions to the next city, where their Pigkiller might be found. She recognized the name right off the bat, the Citadel a fearsome place that would send raids out even as far as the Green Place.

Or so they used to, before the people revolted against their leader. Furiosa isn't sure she believes any of that really happened, but she has to admit that the crowd gathered in the shadows of the three spires looks less wretched than she would have expected, going by reputation.

She still parks the car in a safe spot far away from their grasping hands.

"You don't know _anyone_ by that name?" she asks the masked figure lounging at a massive lift platform, lowered to rest in the dust.

"Pigkiller? Never heard of them," they reply with an insolent shrug. They're scarred up like the War Boys she's heard of, but they aren't painted, aren't shaved bald.

"I'm sure someone has," Furiosa says, jaw set. "Let me ask around, that's all I want."

"What's this?" a woman says, materializing out of the crowd. She's cleaner than the rest, a nearly-white shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

"One scav looking for another," the not-War-Boy says with a shrug.

"Maybe we can help," the woman says, and smiles kindly. "Lots of people pass through here."

"I'm looking for someone called Pigkiller," Furiosa says. "He has directions I need."

"Directions to where? There's water here, if that's what you need."

"To Bartertown," she says with a shake of her head. "I need to talk to Aunty Entity."

"Ah," the woman says, and then, "Maybe you should come up."

"Miss Cheedo," the not-War-Boy whines, but with a stern look directed his way he sighs, and gives some signal or other that has the lift platform raising steadily up into the air.

Soon they reach a height where Furiosa has never been so high in the air before, and her stomach gives an odd swoop when she looks down at the ground below.

"What do you need with Aunty Entity?" Cheedo asks as the platform docks noisily with a large cavern in the rock. It's powered by people, Furiosa sees, not machinery.

"She stole someone from me," Furiosa says, and doesn't feel inclined to tell the details of the story.

"When you say stole," Cheedo says delicately, "You don't mean they were your... property, do you?"

Furiosa shakes her head. "He was..." The words stick in her throat. "He's my husband." It feels strange to say it aloud, but that's what she had agreed to when she went away with the dingo. That she would be his wife.

"Ah," Cheedo says, understanding dawning on her face. "That's okay, then."

She leads them through claustrophobic passageways, a stream of people moving around them in all directions, some looking exactly like the War Boys Furiosa was warned about, others appearing so harmless as to be dead meat. Many stop and greet Cheedo as they go, passing along messages or asking questions.

"Capable might know the way," Cheedo says as they reach a room with a large table taking up most of the space of it

"I might know what?" a woman with red hair and a similar swathe of white fabric wrapped around her chest asks.

"The way to Bartertown," Cheedo says.

"That's not a place you wanna go," Capable says with a shake of her head, but her expression is friendly rather than foreboding.

"I don't want to, I need to," Furiosa asserts.

"Aunty Entity stole her man," Cheedo says.

"Ah," Capable says, and gives Furiosa a more assessing look. "It's easy enough to get there, you just follow the Last Road down the way the sun sets."

"And this road is where?" Furiosa says.

Capable and Cheedo exchange an amused look that has prickling irritation rising up in her. "Look out the window and see," Cheedo says.

Furiosa does so, and sees a long stretch of black pavement that she'd dismissed as something the wind dug up.

"But stay a little while, first," Capable says. "You can have food and water, and we can hear your story."

Furiosa shakes her head. "I shouldn't waste more time."

"It's not wasting," Cheedo says with a smile. "Besides, the lift won't be going down for another hour or two, anyway."

So Furiosa lets the women bring her to another room, this one strewn with cushions and low tables stuffed full of plants. Cheedo immediately goes to a woman reclining on one of the cushions, fingers stained dirty-black and pale blonde hair tied up with all sorts of trinkets.

"Where's Angharad?" Capable asks, "She'd want to know if Aunty Entity is pulling a reverse-Joe."

"Who's Joeing, now?" the blonde says when she's done kissing Cheedo hello.

"Aunty Entity," Cheedo says, "From Bartertown. But only maybe." She frowns a little, and turns to Furiosa. "Did she say why she wanted your husband?"

"Wait till Toast and Angharad get here!" Capable says, just as a woman appears in the doorway with a middling child in tow, a tray in their skinny arms.

"Food," the newcomer says, and plops unceremoniously down on one of the cushions. The child sets down the tray and disappears out the door. "Angharad's coming, though I don't see what the fuss is about."

The women introduce themselves and Furiosa gives her name in return, tense and ready to get back onto the road. She doesn't want to spend time here, even though these must surely be the women who overthrew their warlord-captor, a tale she's heard by firelight a dozen times over since it happened.

A fifth woman appears in the doorway, with blonde hair and a scarred face and a small child of maybe three or four years hanging off her arm.

"Ah, there's little Joe junior," Dag says with a grin.

"That's not his name," the newcomer says, who by process of elimination Furiosa assumes is Angharad. "And who's this?"

"Furiosa, of the Many Mothers," Cheedo volunteers before Furiosa has a chance to introduce herself.

"We've heard of your people here," Angharad says. "Welcome."

"Aunty Entity stole her man," Toast says, sounding bored.

"We thought there might be more to it," Capable adds. The child goes over to her and lifts his hands, and Capable takes him up into her arms.

"Is there?" Angharad says, and levels an assessing look at Furiosa.

Furiosa stares back evenly. "Aunty Entity came in the night to take him away," she says, "Now I'm trying to get him back."

"What would she want with him?" Dag asks. "Was he pretty?"

Furiosa remembers his face by candlelight and shrugs. "We had a deal with her," she says, even though she doesn't particularly want to share the details of what happened, "It broke, so she took him."

"Aunty Entity does love her deals," Capable says, sounding thoughtful.

"No one should steal another person," Angharad says. "What she did was wrong."

"Well, we've shown you the road to Bartertown," Toast says.

"Do you think she's done this to anyone else?" Cheedo asks.

Furiosa considers this, and then shakes her head. Whatever sort of magic was involved to turn the man into a dingo and set up that house, it isn't some parlor trick that can be reused a dozen times over.

"We can't send any of our forces with you," Angharad says, "But there's something that might be useful."

A look is exchanged between the women, and Toast gets up off the cushions with a beleaguered sigh. "I'll get it," she says.

The women invite Furiosa to eat, and since the greens look fresh and healthy and she's here anyway, she does. It doesn't take much longer for Toast to reappear, a pair of long-handled boltcutters in hand.

"Here," she says, passing them over brusquely.

"May they serve you as well as they did us," Angharad says with a wistful sort of smile on her face.

"Thank you," Furiosa says, and secures her grip on the worn rubber handle.

 

Not an hour later she's at docking platform for the lift again, waiting for it to be lowered back down to the sands that seem so very far below her.

"Wait!" a voice calls out, and Furiosa turns to see the Dag hurdling her way towards her, the trinkets in her hair chiming against each other as she runs. "Hang on," she says as she skids to a stop, panting lightly.

"Yes?" Furiosa asks.

"This man you're after, he not very tall, messy hair, a brace on his knee?"

Furiosa considers this description against the dingo-turned-man's appearance. It's not a particularly detailed description, but it does match him fairly well. "His left leg," she says, waiting for Dag's nod of confirmation, "And his eyes are blue."

"That's the one!" Dag crows. "I knew it." She digs through one of the bags slung around her waist and comes up with an object about the size of a fingernail. "Take this seed with you. When you're in direst need, swallow it whole and speak the word that comes to your lips."

Furiosa looks at the seed- some type of gourd, she thinks, to be so large- and figures that it's no stranger than any of the rest of the magic she lived during her time with the dingo. "Thank you," she says, and takes the seed from Dag.

"Good luck," Dag says, and waggles tattooed fingers at her before darting off again, back into the crowd of people looking to take the lift to the ground.

 

Furiosa follows the Last Road west, just as the women had told her to. Sand sometimes covers up the cracked pavement but even so the imprint of its surface can be seen, and she never strays too far from the path.

The final trip takes hardly any time at all, though several days pass while she's driving. The road gives out eventually, asphalt crumbling away to dust, but when Furiosa crests the next hill to get her bearings she sees it: a huddled mass of a city, fed by a veritable river of people.

She can't be _sure_ that the city is Bartertown, but she looks at the scale of the thing and can't imagine what else it could be. Furiosa backs the car up a ways and finds a place to hide it, unwilling to leave it too near such a place.

She grabs enough food and water for two people, as well as the gifts she was given- the boomerang, and the record, and the boltcutters. The seed she places into one of the pouches around her waist and wonders what will constitute 'direst need.'

The line to get in is long and hot, but finally Furiosa is close enough to see a sign standing proudly over a set of gates. She sounds out the letters in her mind carefully, making sure they match up the way they should- and they do. 'BARTERTOWN' blares down at her over a moving swarm of people, all with business of their own to see it. Below it there are more words, and as she inches her way towards the start of the line she puzzles them out until she can read them, as well. 'HELPING BUILD A BETTER TOMORROW.'

She scoffs at that, but keeps her thoughts to herself.

Inside the gates the line tightens up, some people peeling away as if they already know where to go, but the majority stick together, shepherded by guards decked out in ornamental leather gear.

One of them has a second head- or so it looks at a glance. A second look reveals that it's merely a mask suspended over their shoulders, long black hair swinging with every movement.

"What do you have to trade?" the man at the front of the line asks when it's her turn to approach his desk.

"I'm here for Aunty Entity," Furiosa replies. "She stole from me"

The man looks unimpressed, peering down at her with scratched spectacles. "People come here to trade, make a little profit, do a little business," he says. "If you've got nothing to trade, you've got no business in Bartertown."

"I'm here to see Aunty Entity, not to trade," she says firmly.

The gatekeeper looks bored, and calls out over her shoulder, "Next!"

Furiosa grabs the boomerang tucked into her belt and shoves the sharpened metal edge of it against the man's next. "Let me in," she snarls.

Behind her people mill around uneasily, until a guard steps forward to quell them. It's the one with the mask over his shoulder. He regards her for a moment before breaking out into a grin, revealing cracked teeth. He nods at the gatekeeper.

Or not the gatekeeper, Furiosa realizes as she turns back his way. Instead there's a woman standing besides him now, wearing a dress that glints with metal. The same woman Furiosa saw the night the dingo-man was taken away, she is sure of it.

"Well well," Aunty Entity says with a slight drawl, "What have we here?"

"You stole from me," Furiosa says, finally taking the boomerang away from the gatekeeper's neck. "I'm here to collect what's mine."

Aunty Entity throws her head back and lets out a laugh, but there's little mirth in her eyes when she looks at Furiosa again. "Come inside, let's talk," she says, and waves a hand imperiously. The two-headed guard stands down.

Furiosa follows Aunty Entity when she gestures to a doorway behind the gatekeeper's desk, a pair of guards trailing behind.

Beyond the gates Bartertown swims before her, a menagerie of humanity haggling and drinking and living, stinking-sweet like rotten meat. They're silent as they make their way to a small lift at the base of a tower, decked out in swathes of fabric to hide it from peering eyes and the burning sun.

The tower reveals itself to be a living space, airy and grand with wide-bladed fans spinning slowly through the hot air. There's someone playing music on some sort of instrument that Furiosa has never seen before, though they cut off abruptly when the small group enters.

"Now, what's all this about?" Aunty Entity says when she's settled herself in the middle of the space, clearly comfortable in her command.

"You broke a deal and took what wasn't yours to take," Furiosa says.

"No, _you_ broke a deal," Aunty Entity counters, sounding amused. "You're here for the creature, I presume? Well, he and I had a deal, and you broke it for him."

"It was a rotten deal," Furiosa says. "What sort of a person puts a curse on another?"

Aunty Entity smirks, and rather than answer she gestures behind her, to a table laden with fruit and water. "Thirsty?"

"Give me back my husband," Furiosa says, no longer stumbling over the word.

"Your _husband_?" Aunty Entity says, and shakes her head. "No, no; out of the question."

"Then let me see him," Furiosa says, already formulating possible ways to escape from wherever they're holding him. Will he be a man, or a dingo?

Aunty Entity is silent for a moment, looking her over with an assessing eye. "That's the boomerang of the Great Northern Tribe," she says after a moment, almost thoughtful. "Give it to me and I'll let you have an hour with your... husband."

"Deal," Furiosa says. "Take me to him and you can have it."

Aunty Entity laughs, and says, "Ton Ton, play something romantic." The musician starts up his music again, and Aunty Entity steps towards one of the curtains that sweep the place from ceiling to floor. Behind it is the figure of a man, lying on the floor.

"You killed him?" Furiosa says, stunned for a moment before lunging forward towards Aunty Entity. The guards she'd all but forgotten about grab her bodily and hold her back before she's gone more than a pace or two.

"He's just sleeping," Aunty Entity says dismissively. "Why ruin such an investment? Now, the boomerang."

Furiosa thrashes against the guards' hold, but she can see now that the man's chest is rising and falling, and she relaxes. When the guards loosen their grips she shakes them off and hands over the boomerang.

No one stops her when she moves towards the man's side, and kneels down next to him on a ratty pile of blankets.

"Hey," she says, and grabs his shoulder to shake him awake. "It's me."

But the man doesn't even stir, eyes closed peacefully, breathing even and steady.

Furiosa spends another moment or two trying to wake him before turning angrily towards Aunty Entity. "Did you drug him?"

"A lady never reveals her secrets," Aunty Entity says with a shrug. "You have fifty-seven more minutes."

Furiosa glares at her and then turns back to the sleeping dingo-man. He looks just as handsome as she remembered, though maybe a little paler, less healthy. She hopes Aunty Entity hasn't been mistreating him.

"Wake up," she tells him, giving up on shaking him awake and instead reaching out to give him a sharp slap on the cheek, hoping the sting will jar him. His head turns a little from the force of the blow, but he doesn't otherwise move.

"Get _up_ ," Furiosa snaps, and backhands his other cheek. But the man doesn't show any signs of reaction, just keeps on sleeping, the same pattern of breathing she's gotten used to from sleeping besides him in the magic house all that time.

"Please," she says, softer, uncaring that Aunty Entity and her guards can likely hear her. "Wake up and we'll find a way out, I promise."

She spends her entire allotted hour pleading and berating the sleeping dingo-man, hoping something will work and he'll wake up, but all to no avail. No matter what she says or does he continues to sleep, as peacefully as if he was back at the magic house taking a nap in the sunshine.

"Time's up," Aunty Entity says far too soon, smug amusement on her face.

"No," Furiosa says, "What sort of deal is this? You drugged him."

"I never said he'd be _awake_ for your hour," Aunty Entity says with a careless shrug. "Ironbar, Steelshank, take her away."

The two guards move forward and grab for her, but Furiosa fights back, not wanting to be wrested away from the man even if he's drugged after all.

"Now now, you don't want to be a dealbreaker, do you?" Aunty Entity says, holding herself aloof from the struggle. Furiosa accidentally steps on the dingo-man's hand and even that much pain doesn't register with him.

"You're the dealbreaker," Furiosa spits, blood in her mouth from a blow that's left her dazed.

Aunty Entity just watches, amused, as the guards haul her away from the tower- they haul her all the way outside the gates, in fact, and deposit her on the hot sands outside of Bartertown proper.

Furiosa pulls herself away from the guards and debates rushing back in, but she doubts she'll have much luck. Best case she gets back and the dingo-man will still be asleep and she'll have to figure out some way to drag his dead weight out with her while fighting off multiple guards.

Instead she makes the trek back to the car, to regroup and think about what her options are. Bartertown is built on trade, and she seems to amuse Aunty Entity, so most likely she can entice her into another deal.

But what then? She'll have to specify that the dingo-man needs to be awake for their hour, obviously, but even if he is awake there's no guarantee that she'll be able to break him out, not with all the might of Bartertown against her.

Furiosa mulls over her choices long into the night, thinking about the seed the Dag had given her and whether she should use it. It would give her a word to speak, hadn't she said? Furiosa can't imagine a word being of much value, and she dismisses the idea before very long.

 

The morning dawns hot and fast, and Furiosa once again takes her place in the line to be admitted to the city. This time when she gets to the head of the line the gatekeeper seems to recognize her.

"Aunty said you'd be back," he says, amusement lacing his flat words. "What is it you have to trade this time?"

"Let me speak to her," Furiosa says.

He tilts his head just slightly, the spectacles perched on his nose making her feel like some speck of dust he's examining for value. He flicks his eyes behind her and nods, and she sees the same guards as the day before approach.

"Take her to Aunty," the gatekeeper says with a wave of his hand, settling back into his seat heavily.

The guards escort her the same way as before, through the throngs of people and over to the lift. If she traded something of value to get inside the city without a guard escort, could she rush the tower? Furiosa examines it as they ascend, and while she sees several possible entry points, she'd be completely exposed as she climbs. No doubt at least one of the guards in this place would have a gun and simply shoot her down.

"Well well," Aunty Entity says when the lift's docked and Furiosa is pushed unceremoniously into the open space of the main tower, "Look what the cat dragged in. Or should I say dog?"

"I'm here for another deal," Furiosa says. She's taller than Aunty Entity but Entity's presence fills up the room, clearly at ease in the space that she's claimed.

"Are you now," Aunty Entity says lightly.

"Here," Furiosa says, and produces the record disk she was given. "Another deal for you. I want him to be awake this time when I see him, though."

"Such demands!" Aunty Entity says, amused, but she leans in to examine the disk. "Is this the sonic of New Sydney? Hmm, well, now that _is_ interesting." She looks over Furiosa shrewdly, before smiling. "Of course. An hour seeing your man, and he'll be awake."

"Deal," Furiosa says, and holds out the disk for Aunty Entity to take.

The curtain is drawn back just as it was last time, and the dingo-man is sitting up and stretching on his bed of blankets.

Furiosa strides over but instead of walking to his side, she's slammed into what feels like a solid wall. She reflexively takes a step back, nose smarting from where it bashed into the barrier, but she can't see anything that could have stopped her.

She reaches out tentatively and her fingers meet resistance, even though she doesn't see anything.

"What did you do?" she demands of Aunty Entity, whirling around in anger.

"Why, nothing," Aunty Entity says with faux innocence. "I'm just letting you see your man when he's awake, like we agreed."

Understanding dawns on Furiosa and she grinds her teeth together, hand clenching tight into a fist. "You know this isn't what I meant," she says.

Aunty Entity just shrugs, and calls out for her musician to play some music again.

Furiosa glares at her and then turns back to the dingo-man, who doesn't seem to have noticed her presence. She bangs her fist on the invisible barrier, but there's no sound produced, just as if she was waving her hand through the air. So it isn't some sort of ultra-clear glass, then, but that doesn't mean she can't possible break through it anyway.

She spends the entire hour searching for a weak spot in the barrier, digging her fingers in along the seam of the floor and walls, throwing whatever object Aunty Entity doesn't have nailed down in an attempt to at least get the man's attention. But he doesn't ever once react to anything she's doing, eyes vacant as he looks down through the fluttering curtains to the ground below. Is there the same type of barrier there, too, stopping him from attempting to escape?

"Time's up," Aunty Entity says finally, and Furiosa is once again dragged away from the dingo-man and back outside the gates of Bartertown. She doesn't fight it as much this time, saving her strength against the futile struggle.

 

The next day repeats itself, with Furiosa finding herself in Aunty Entity's tower abode, about to make her deal. She wonders if this counts as her direst need and if the seed will give her some magic words to say to get the deal right, but she's gone over the wording all night, and is sure she has it right this time.

"I want to spend an hour with him, awake and able to communicate, able to see and hear me, able to touch. No tricks, no barriers, no magic. Deal?" Furiosa says, staring down at Aunty Entity.

Aunty Entity sighs. she doesn't look particularly pleased, which gives Furiosa hope that she's finally gotten it right after all. "All that? And for what?"

"This," Furiosa says, and holds out the boltcutters she was given.

"These came from the Citadel," Aunty Entity says after a moment of examining them. "Hmm, but an hour is such a tall order for all you're asking. Half."

"Deal," Furiosa says.

The curtain is raised, but just like the first time, the dingo-man seems to be fast asleep. Furiosa walks over to him and there's no barrier to stop her, but just as the first time, there's seemingly no way to wake him.

"What about our deal?" she snarls at Aunty Entity.

"What about it?" Aunty Entity says. "Oh, did you forget to specify _which_ man you wanted your half an hour with? My mistake; I thought you meant my Ton Ton. He plays so well, doesn't he?"

"You liar," Furiosa spits at her. "You knew exactly who I meant. You're nothing but a dealbreaker."

At this the guards step forward, weapons held in readiness, but Aunty Entity holds up her hand to stop them.

"I uphold my deals," Aunty Entity says calmly, a smirk on her face.

Furiosa bares her teeth in a grimace of anger, fingernails digging into the dingo-man's hand, a pain he doesn't react to.

This is her moment of direst need, she realizes. She has nothing left to trade with, nothing worth bartering for an hour of time.

She lets go of the man's hand and instead reaches inside the pouch on her belt, drawing out the seed the Dag had given her. It looks perfectly normal, but then, she's well convinced of magic nowadays.

The seed goes down in one easy swallow, Aunty Entity's forehead wrinkling in a frown. "What was that?" she asks, clearly caught off guard. "What did you just do?"

Furiosa waits patiently for the urge to speak, like Dag had said, and finds that when she opens her mouth there's a word waiting to fall out. "Max," she says simply.

"What was that?" Aunty Entity repeats, sounding nervous now.

"Max," Furiosa says again, this time puzzling over the word. It's awfully short if it's meant to be some sort of magic spell, but it sounds somehow familiar.

The dingo-man stirs, eyes blinking open suddenly.

"No!" Aunty Entity snaps.

He turns to Furiosa, confusion written all over his face.

"Max," she says a third time, more confidently, and his eyes widen. "That's your name, isn't it?"

She hadn't ever bothered to learn if the dingo had a name when she was living with him- it was only the two of them, and he was a _dingo_. Calling him by name just hadn't seemed necessary.

There had been plenty of bits of junk in his car when she'd been working on it, including a battered and slightly-rusted piece of metal wedged almost under the floorboards. A little more time and it would have worked itself loose to be lost to the wasteland forever.

"Max Rock-a-tan-sky," she says, remembering how she'd puzzled over the mash of letters on the second half of the tag, how if she broke them down there were simple words hidden inside. She hadn't thought anything of it at the time, but now she knows that the name written on it must have been his.

The man- Max- nods his head, eyes still wide with surprise.

"Get out," Aunty Entity snarls, "You've ruined everything!"

Furiosa looks over at her again, her presence no longer seeming intimidating in the least, like a veneer's been stripped away.

"Come on," Furiosa says, and holds out her hand for Max to take.

"You know my name," he says, sounding dazed.

"Come on," she repeats, not wanting to stick around and test Aunty Entity's patience when she's demanding they leave.

Max lets her haul him up to his feet, the both of them wary as they leave the alcove he'd been staying in.

"Get out and don't you dare ever come back," Aunty Entity says, anger and disgust written all over her face.

Furiosa can't imagine why she would ever _want_ to. "Deal," she says, slightly mocking, unsure of why saying Max's name is what broke whatever spell Aunty Entity had over him but not particularly interested in sticking around to find out.

She and Max flee in silence, until they're safely outside the walls of Bartertown for the last time.

"You came for me," he says, still sounding surprised above all else.

"Your car's this way," Furiosa replies, and passes him one of the bottles of water she'd brought with her.

"You didn't have to," Max says when they're well beyond the stench of the city behind them.

"It was my fault you were taken in the first place," she says.

"Thank you," he says, quiet.

"Besides," she says, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. He really is handsome, and she'd grown fond of him in a way even when he was just a dingo. Now that he's a man- presumably for good- she can feel her interest in him truly piqued. "We're married, aren't we?"

 


End file.
